Step aside Chase Infiniti, there’s a new entrant into the ‘young actress with an improbable name making a breakout film debut’ competition. Extra Geography, the delightful feature debut from (also incredibly named) director Molly Manners, introduces us to one Galaxie Clear, starring here as Minna, a schoolgirl on the cusp of joining a more grown up world alongside her best friend Flic (Marni Duggan). It’s a great calling card for all the young women involved, in front of and behind the camera, a heartfelt and deeply honest, yet consistently very funny, look at the things you have to sacrifice on your way to being a full adult human.
Adapted from a short story by Rose Tremain, Extra Geography drops us into an all-girls boarding school somewhere in the north of England and in some time between the late nineties and early 2000s (modern enough sensibilities but no smartphones is the basic gist). Minna and Flic are inseparable Year 10s with big academic ambitions and a shared desire to be vaguely ‘impressive’. They’re also at the age, though, when this sort of codependent friendship can become a ‘crabs in a bucket’ situation, each girl channelling their own fear of a grown up future into small acts of sabotage, each hoping the other stays in stasis so that they don’t have to change.
Manners and writer Miriam Battye (a veteran of Succession, which certainly explains the superb writing) do an excellent job of balancing the cringing tragedy and ridiculous humour of the situation. Flic, the smarter but poorer of the two, is constantly apologising for everything she says and does, while Minna – posher, blonder, prettier – starts to see life handed to her on a plate without clocking that that’s what’s happening. A lesser film would have beaten you over the head with this message, but Manners and Battye instead just let its truths seep in to the story’s laughs and dramatic beats.
Determined to be good at life, the pair decide to practice falling in love, choosing as their target the unassuming Kiwi geography teacher Ms Delavigne (Alice Englert), which awakens something genuine in Flic but remains a big joke for Minna. Extra Geography mostly manages to sidestep the ethical concerns of such a plot by having Ms Delavigne be largely ignorant of the girls’ schemes, while Minna’s actual romantic intentions focus on the nearby boys’ school when the summer play – A Midsummer Night’s Dream – is announced to be co-ed.
The Shakespeare of it all infuses into the story’s structure, which is broken into five clearly demarcated acts, though it is maybe a little on the nose that Flic ends up playing Bottom the donkey while Minna (despite being a terrible actress) lands the fairy queen Titania part. The fairytale aspect mostly makes itself known through the twinkling score, which ties together Manners’s confident direction, able to twist you from laughing out loud to gritting your teeth through the awkwardness in rapid succession. Matched by one of the year’s zippiest, wittiest scripts and a pair of lead performances in perfect sync, it all adds up to a really exciting debut from a creative team with, hopefully, very long careers in front of them.
